


what wondrous creatures

by Trillian_Astra



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, Post-Finale, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 16:09:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13170453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trillian_Astra/pseuds/Trillian_Astra
Summary: A series of things happen after the Urania lands back on Earth. Those things include Minkowski being reunited with her husband, everyone hiding out in the Minkowski-Koudelka house until the media circus dies down, and Doug starting to wonder about his family.POST-EPISODE 61 "BRAVE NEW WORLD"





	what wondrous creatures

The journey back to Earth was best described as long periods of quiet with occasional bursts of activity as the _Urania_ ’s course needed to be corrected or something needed fixing.

During the busy moments, Doug tried to keep out of the way. Renee and Captain Lovelace and Jacobi and Hera all seemed to know what they were doing. He just watched them work and tried not to bother them.

During the quiet times, they all slept a lot. They alternated, at least two people awake at any one time. Usually Renee and Doug were on the same shift. There wasn’t a lot to do, so they spent the hours talking. She told him about her childhood in Poland, about coming to America, about her husband. She told him the stories of musicals she’d seen and books she’d read.

Slowly, piece by piece, she told him the story of the _Hephaestus_ , of everything that had happened to them there. How Captain Lovelace had joined them, how Jacobi had joined them.

Doug listened, and tried to understand the things that had happened to the old him.

~

Once the _Urania_ had landed, things very quickly stopped being quiet and started being very hectic indeed. The landing itself was fairly routine, but once they were out of the ship the questions started. As far as Doug could make out, the main ones were:

  1. Why Jacobi was the only one actually listed on the _Urania_ ’s crew manifest.
  2. How he and Renee were there at all, as they were supposed to have died in a shuttle crash two years earlier.
  3. How Captain Lovelace was there, as she’d apparently been declared “missing, presumed dead” several years ago.



There were also some questions about what had happened to the _Hephaestus_ and a ship called the _Sol_ and someone called Cutter, but Doug just did what Renee had told him, which was to shrug and say he had amnesia and had no idea what they were talking about.

~

All four of them got taken to a nearby hospital for thorough check-ups, so Doug spent a couple of days lying in a bed while doctors did their tests and other people, who wore dark suits and serious expressions, asked him to explain various things about the mission into their tape recorders.

One day – Doug thought maybe the third day, though he wasn’t sure – after the mob of reporters had dispersed for the night, someone showed up. Doug didn’t hear them arrive, he’d been listening to music on a CD player one of the nurses had lent him. He pulled the headphones off when he heard shouting.

_-don’t care who you have to talk to, I want to see the survivors!_

_Sir, please calm down, the patients are resting at the moment._

_No, I need to see them now. I saw the news come in from the AP, it said that Lieutenant Commander Renee Minkowski was one of the survivors and…_

_Yes, sir, I’m aware of the press statement._

_You don’t understand. Renee Minkowski is… was… is my_ wife _. They told me she_ died _two years ago, some story about a shuttle crash, and if she’s alive and in that room then I need to see her, and I need to see her_ now _._

_Ah. Uh, of course, do you have some identification, Mr…_

_Koudelka. Dominik Koudelka… I’ll be listed as her next-of-kin…_

Doug looked over at Renee, in the bed next to his. She was sitting up, eyes wide.

“Uh, Renee?” Doug asked.

“Uh-huh?” she said, not looking at him.

“You OK?”

“He came. He… he knows…”

Before she could say anything else, the door opened and a tall man appeared. He looked tired and travelworn, as though he’d been driving a long time without stopping. He glanced around the ward, taking in Lovelace and Jacobi and Doug, and then he saw Renee and… stopped.

“Renee?”

She looked up at him, opened her mouth to say something, and then, surprisingly, burst into tears.

It only took a few strides for him to reach her, and soon he was sitting on the edge of the bed and holding her close.

A moment later, she said, “I thought… how did you get here?”

“Saw the story come in through the AP. A ship lands unexpectedly, carrying four people, three of whom are supposed to be dead… then they released the names. I drove all day to get down here.”

“I… I love you, Dom.”

“I love you, too.”

“I thought… I thought…”

“It’s okay, you can tell me later,” he murmured, rubbing her back in slow circles.

~

After Dominik showed up, the visits from the people in dark suits stopped. (This may have had something to do with his job as editor of a major newspaper, though honestly by that point the crew were tired of answering questions, so they didn’t question it too much.) At around the same time, the doctors decided that everyone was at least mostly healthy and there was no real benefit to keeping them in the ward.

That was how the four of them, dressed in a mixture of hospital scrubs and whatever clothes Dominik had been able to get in the nearby stores, ended up bundled into Dominik’s car.

“Uh, Minkowski, are you sure about this?” Lovelace asked as they were getting settled. “We could just hide out in a hotel somewhere…”

Renee twisted around in her seat. “Isabel… it’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

~

The Koudelka-Minkowski house turned out to be most of a brownstone on a fairly normal-looking New York street. After a quick debate, Doug got the spare room, while Isabel took the sofa-bed in Dominik’s office. Jacobi said he’d take the sofa in the living room, as he wasn’t planning to hang around.

“No offense, but… I don’t really want to spend any more time around you guys than I have to.”

“Well, all right, but you might want to stick around until things die down a bit,” Renee said.

“I’ll be fine…’s not like they could find me, anyway.”

“Uh… yeah, that’s not the case anymore,” Dominik added. “You four are just about the most recognisable people on the planet at this point. They’re calling you the ‘Miracle Four’…”

“Ugh, great…”

“Still happy with the sofa?”

“I’ve slept on worse.”

~

“Right, so if we go outside, we’re going to get mobbed by reporters. Which none of us wants. We can order in food, or Dom can get it, so… what do we do now?” Renee asked.

“Well, Eiffel has a lot of movies to catch up on, so we could start there… I vote that we start with _Groundhog Day_ ,” Isabel said, grinning.

~

“Hey, uh, Renee?” Doug said in the kitchen, a week after they’d arrived from the hospital.

“Yeah?”

“Did I, um, the old me… did he say anything about his family? They’ve probably seen me on TV by now, I should get in touch with them.”

“You didn’t really talk about them much… I know you had a little girl, you kept a photo of the two of you under the comms panel on the _Hephaestus_. You both looked happy in it.”

“I didn’t say anything? At all?”

“I don’t think you wanted to talk about it.”

“Oh.”

“Are you… okay?”

“Could we find her? My… my daughter?”

“I guess… Dom has some contacts, he could ask around, if you’re sure that’s what you want.”

~

“Can I talk to you in private?” Dominik said to Renee as he came back from work.

Confused, she followed him to their bedroom and waited as he locked the door. “Sorry,” he said, “I just don’t want anyone to overhear this.”

“What’s wrong, Dom? Did something happen?”

“You know Doug was asking about his family, and you asked me to see what I could find out?”

“Yes…”

“Are we sure he really wants to know this stuff? I’m not convinced that it would be good for him.”

“He knows _something_ happened… he never used to talk about his family at all, he obviously didn’t want to. I told him that the other day and he seemed really keen to know what had happened to his little girl.”

“Huh. Well, if you think he can take it…”

“What did you find?”

Dominik sat down on the bed and pulled a file from his briefcase, passing it to Renee. “I talked to a PI I know, she had a look around. Doug had one serious relationship, with a woman called Kate Linzer, she’s living in Boston at the moment. They had one kid, a little girl called Anne. From the court records my friend found, Doug had picked Anne up from school, after he’d been drinking, and his car was in a collision. The kids in the other car got badly hurt, one’s in a wheelchair now.”

“Anne?”

“She suffered a head injury… it left her with severe hearing loss.”

“Shit…”

“Are you sure that Doug wants to know this stuff?”

Renee sat down on the bed next to her husband. “I think he wants to understand what kind of person he was before the amnesia. I don’t think I can hide this from him. Could your PI get contact information for them?”

Dominik opened the file. “She already did.”

~

Renee thought hard about how best to give Doug the news. In the end, she decided to just give him the file and let him read through it at his own pace.

He took the file and disappeared into the guest room for the best part of a day. Eventually, he opened the door to find her waiting on the stairs for him.

“Doug?”

“I… I think I need to see them.”

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from The Tempest (it's the next part of the "brave new world" line).


End file.
